Quarta-feira 4 Jun 2008, 18h:07
Last night I went to see Chris Garneau play at Garage. I’d heard a few songs because of the crazy NYC connections between bands (The Age of Rockets, Saul, Gregory and the Hawk) and then I listened to more, and I was hooked. Besides, the show was free and it seemed like Chris didn’t have a big audience around here, so I was looking forward to a nicely quiet and intimate show.
but that small small gig was so much more than that.
When I got there, I noticed him standing and talking to someone and I promised myself I would quietly sit around and have a beer instead of chatting up every single musician in the room as usual. The stage was tiny and low and we were sitting half a meter away from him - stupidly I have to admit, because the sound was probably a little better in the back. Even though there was some constant background noise of chattering, from up close it felt like time was stopping. I was holding my breath, I was crushed by the tension building up, it was beautiful, it felt real - like a first kiss, the first cherry tree blooming, a summer fling, a heartbreak, your best friend moving away, graduating,.. like a gigantic starlit winter sky.
Chris was whispering thank you’s in-between the songs, but that was all - he was concentrated on his hands on the keyboard, hardly looking at the audience, his amazing voice fluctuating from a low whisper to a high-pitched rhyme filling up the whole space. His music is melancholy at its best. It grabs you when you’re not looking and it doesn’t let you go.
I had my camera in my bag, but was too ashamed to point that big thing right at him, so I quietly pressed the shutter in the most intense moments of one of the last songs. When, in an act of bravado, I requested Baby’s Romance, and he said that he “usually doesn’t play that song without the band”, I made another request - Between the Bars. He played it, and I think it was even slower than his recorded version. I wanted to cry, gasp, clap and hug him at the same time - I could FEEL. It was gorgeous and I never wanted it to stop, but after two more songs it did, and he nodded, and just like this the set was over and the three boys sitting with me were bewildered, and I was amazed. Chris picked up the microphone one last time to say that he’d be happy to talk to anyone after the show, and I did, and the rest is history.
(it involves an old abandoned hospital, staring at the sky in a cemetery, a lot of beer and a promise to write letters)
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y63/alicefairy/rockstars/chrisgarneau/chris1.jpg
